SMS - reminders

It is possible to set one or multiple reminders for customers that are applicable to Shifts and Events. For instance, reminders can be sent to users prior to their reservations, such as one hour, several hours, or one day in advance.

Notifications related to reminders sent to the customer will appear in the booking's notifications tab.

Cron system

The Action Scheduler cron system from WordPress is the foundation of the system. It schedules an action that repeats every 5 minutes to verify whether there are any booking reminders to be dispatched. Once the email reminder is sent, the notification is saved in the booking notifications list. The cron makes use of the WP Cron functionality to schedule the actions. WP Cron is included by default on all WordPress sites.

The cron utilizes WP Cron functionality to arrange actions, which is pre-installed on all WordPress sites by default.

However, the cron system is only activated during page loads. Therefore, the reminders' precision will improve with an increase in website visits.

To provide an illustration, suppose you have scheduled a reminder to be dispatched 3 hours before the booking time:

The customer has a booking at 15:00 Action Scheduler operates every 5 minutes At 12:05, the Action Scheduler confirms that the reminder has not been sent and proceeds to initiate the email If there are no page visits between 12:00 and 12:30, the Action Scheduler will not execute, and the email will not be dispatched until 12:30.

To be sure that reminders are sent on time you can configure your cron command via the hosting control panel.

Open your hosting control panel, find the “cron jobs” link, create a new cron job, add this command and configure it to 5 minutes execution:

wget -q -O - https://your-site-name.com/wp-cron.php

Do not forget to replace your-site-name.com to your real site name.